Tuesday, July 20, 2010

6 Hours of Power Pre-Report

Ya, ya, I said I see yuz Monday, well this is MY Monday. It took three days to get to the 6 Hours of Power and back. It's nigh on midnight and M and I are trying to catch up on three days of DVRed Le Tour De coverage. You have to have your priorities y'know. During the next 24 hours I'll be meticulously outlining and fact-checking my very official race report for the 29er Crew blog, which I will hopefully be posting some time in the next couple days. It went well, crazy crap happened, it was a great trip altogether. It did start and finish with a bit of meteorological histrionics.

We left Friday night, after The Work. We were immediately hit with torrential downpours. M was white-knuckling the wheel for the first couple hours of the trip. I was white-knuckling the dial on the ipod, trying to cue up the most grating possible music.

Traveling with my wife is always better. After The 6HOP, I was telling Peter "BMP" Keiller, between mouthfuls of 5-minutes-past-al-dente-pasta, how I had my best SSWC performance as a result of my wife's attendance at the event. The night before SSWC08 in Napa she had the presence of mind to suggest that maybe, just maybe I was drunk enough just as Buck Keich handed me an entire pitcher of beer. I thought it was a good idea to drink the entire thing as if it were a pint. She thought it was a good idea to lead me home like a brain-damaged child so I could sleep it off and race in a semi-serious manner the next day. Or at the very least not puke on myself trying. That night I may have said something that sounded as if I didn't appreciate her guidance, I probably said something like "Hey Warden...yer not the boss-a-me...sazza-flazza-flazza." But in the clear light of morning, I saw her wisdom.

One way in which she improved this trip was by suggesting that we drive a few hours on Friday night, stay at a motel, and then continue on to East Hammondsport Saturday morning. Left to my own defective devices, I would have undoubtedly dicked around Saturday AM, driven it straight, and arrived late having not slept a wink. She made me sleep until 10:45, it was nuts. Um...and the BL Lime, that's hers. My Zimas are in my bag.

Saturday, on the way to East Hammondsport, we stopped off for a little spin somewhere in the state of New York. What we rode was part of The Finger Lakes trail, it was not a well-traveled piece of trail.

Coming through the town of Bath, we stopped to grab a couple things at CVS. There was a little town fair-type-thing going on down on the common. When we got out of the car I heard what I thought was a loud car stereo blaring death metal. I thought that there was some kid being a total punk, blaring his tunes while all the old folks in their lawn chairs were trying to listen to a barber shop quartet or something. But no. The death metal was coming from the gazebo in the town square. It was a high school band playing full-on, Amon Amarth style, roaring vocals, terrifying death metal. Excellent.

We got to East Hammondsport in time for dinner and a tour of the premises.

The '67 Chevy is a new addition.

My Auntie Ann's place has a multitude of killer places to relax while enjoying beautiful views and drinking beer from Keuka Brewing.

See. Part of the reason the race went so well (shut it, more on that later) was all the EXTREME relaxing we did the night before.

There were crazy lightning storms overnight, and for some reason I couldn't sleep, I mean extra-special, even for me. In the morning I woke up feeling like ass, but it was a beautiful day and there was a-racin' to be done. So we hit it —

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About Big Bikes

I am a Blogger/Writer/Video-hack guy for hire. I write product reviews and other weirdness for BikeRumor. I cover races and do interviews for Cyclingdirt. I come over here to talk weird and curse a lot.